Ashton-Kirk, Investigator Part 12

Ashton-Kirk looked at him inquiringly; there was expectancy in the investigator's eyes, but he said nothing.

"Perhaps you'll think that I'm all kinds of a fool," continued Pendleton, "and maybe I am. But here are the things that I'm trying to marshall in order. I'll take them just as they happened." He held up one hand and with the other began to check off the counts upon his fingers. "Yesterday you have a visit--a visit of a professional nature--from Edyth Vale. Last night she strangely disappears for a time. At a most unconventional hour this morning I find you at her door. Then I learn that you are on your way to look into the details of a murder that you had just heard of--somehow. Now I hear that Allan Morris, Edyth's fiance, has been, in rather an odd way, upon familiar terms with the murdered man."

He paused as he checked this last count, still regarding his friend fixedly.

"I don't claim," he went on, after a moment, "that these things have anything to do with each other. But, somehow, they've got together in my mind, and I can't--"

Here the door re-opened and Stillman entered, followed by the big German.

"Just take a chair, Mr. Berg," said the coroner, seating himself at the desk and affixing his eyegla.s.ses.

The German lowered his form into the chair indicated and folded his fat hands across his monstrous paunch.

"Your name in full--is what?" asked Stillman with formality.

"Franz Berg. I sell me delicatessen at 478 Christie Place. I haf been there for fifteen years."

"You were acquainted with the murdered man?"

The delicatessen dealer unfolded his hands and waved them significantly.

"I was aguainted with him--yes. But I was not friendly with him--no.

He is dead, ain't it? Und it's not right to say someding about the dead. But he was no friend of mine."

"I understand. But tell me, Mr. Berg, how late do you keep your place open?"

"In the summertime--seven o'clock. But after dose theaters open, I stays me on the chob till twelve, or later somedimes. There is one--two--three what you call burlesque places, right by me; and no sooner do they close up, than right away those actor peoples come to buy. I do a goot business, so I keep open."

"Then you were there until midnight last night?"

"More later than that yet."

"Was there any movement of any sort about Hume's place? Did you see or hear anything?"

The great red face of Berg took on a solemn look.

"It is maybe not ride that I should say somedings," complained he.

"But if the law will not excuse me, I will say it, if it makes some more trouble or not."

"It is vitally necessary," stated the young coroner, firmly, "that you tell me everything you know about this matter."

"Well," said the delicatessen dealer, reluctantly, "last night as I stood by my window looking oudside on the street, I see me that Italian feller go by und turn in at the side door; a second lader I hear him go up the steps to Hume's place."

"What Italian fellow do you refer to?"

"He lifs close by me, a few doors away. His name is Spatola, und he plays the violin the gurb-stones beside."

"What time was it that you saw him?"

"Maybe elefen o'clock. I am not sure. But it was just a little while before I got me the rush of customers from the theaters."

"Did you notice his manner? Was there anything unusual in his looks?"

"I had me only a glimbs of him. He looked about the same as effer. He was in a hurry, for it rained a liddle; und under his coat yet he carried his fiddle."

"If it was under his coat, how do you know it was his fiddle?"

The German scratched his head in a reflective way.

"I don't know it," said he at last. "But he somedimes takes his instrument inside there, und I just get the notion that it was so.

Yes?"

"When did he come out?"

The man shook his head.

"I don'd know," he said.

"Do you mean that you saw no one come out?"

"No; I _did_ see someone come out. But first I see me someone else go in."

"Ah! And who was that?"

"I don't know his name; but I had seen him often before. He is a kind of svell feller. He had a cane und plendy of style."

"And later you saw someone come out. Now, your use of the word 'someone' leads me to think that you do not know whether it was Spatola or the stranger."

"I don'd," said Berg. "I was busy then. I just heard me someone rush down the stairs, making plendy noise, und I heard that drunken Hume lift up a window, stick out his head and call some names after him. My customers laugh und think it's a joke; but I am ashamed such a disgracefulness to have around my business yet."

"If Hume called after the person who left," said Stillman, acutely, to Ashton-Kirk, "that eliminates one of the callers. It proves that Hume was still alive after the man had gone."

"That is undoubtedly a fact," replied the investigator.

Stillman turned upon Berg with dignity.

"Surely you must have noticed the man if all that uproar attended his exit. You must have detected enough to mark a difference between an exceptionally well-dressed man and an Italian street musician."

Berg shook his big head.

"It was aboud twelve o'clock in the night-dime, und my customers besides I had to pay some attention to," stated he.

The coroner was baffled by the man's positiveness.

"Well," said he, resignedly. "What else did you see?"

Berg shook his head once more.

"Nothing else. Putty soon I closed up and went home." Then a flash of recollection came into his dull face. "As I went down the street I saw some lights in Hume's windows. One of them windows was open--maybe the one he sticked his head out of to call the man names--und I could hear him laughing like he used to do when he was trying to make a jacka.s.s of some peoples."